RIP Johnny Castle

RIP, Patrick Swayze. I didn't see Dirty Dancing until I was mostly grown-up, but I've watched it enough since then to make up for lost time. A classic. The Swayz had a weird and varied career (To Wong Foo, anyone?) but was beloved by all. This quote from my fave film website sums it up nicely: "He’s made a lot of bad movies, too, but somehow, most of those only endeared him to us."

Here's how I'll remember his charm and gorgeous dancing skills. Sorry for the terrible quality, but it's the only video with the actual sketch. Enjoy!

By Special Request...My "Tribute" to MJ

I grew up less than an hour away from Neverland Ranch. Whenever anyone saw a stretch limo in the area, we always assumed, "Oh, Michael Jackson," and craned our necks for a peek of the white glove. One of my friends even saw him once, shopping at the Toys 'r Us in Santa Maria.

What I'm trying to say is that Michael Jackson was always there, on tv, on the radio, and in our general kid consciousness. If you're my age, your best memories of him were of his early 80's persona, when you were still too scared to watch Thriller. I remember hearing "Billie Jean" when I was four or five and getting kind of spooked by it; I think I found the synth riff haunting; it made me feel sad. (I also got spooked by the song "Maneater," and any song with a robot-sounding voice. That's the kind of kid I was.)

I don't feel personally sad about his death, because the version of Michael Jackson my inner child remembers has been gone for years and years. But I feel sad about a lot of other things. How does a person get to that point? To live the way he did meant that he had no real friends, no one to say, "Hey. What are you doing? We're concerned about you," but merely an army of yes men willing to prescribe any drug, to keep weird sexual secrets, and who knows what else. Such an odd, dark path doesn't happen without the consent of many outside parties. Also, there's us, the public who loved to watch as his life became increasingly bizarre. "Did you hear what Michael Jackson just did? What a freak!" People love to watch a downward spiral.

It seems like if you magically got whatever you wanted, that things would turn out pretty good.

But if what you want is your lost childhood, you end up with a monkey, a lonely amusement park, and slumber parties that weren't quite right. It's an incredible story, really, and that's what I can't stop thinking about. Not Michael Jackson the person, because we'll never truly know about that, but the fact that his crazy, sad, fascinating story is over. MJ never stopped trying to find whatever it was he was looking for, we never stopped watching him, and that, my friends, is "human nature."